


You’re the Doctor?

by Sagartolen



Series: Doctor Who: plot-bunnies [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Episode: s06e13 The Wedding of River Song, Gen, Mental Anguish, Paradox, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 03:49:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5149169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sagartolen/pseuds/Sagartolen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a moment of desperation, River, instead of shooting the Doctor, shoots herself in his place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

To say that he was shocked would be an understatement. 

He was horrified, dismayed and upset. 

How had things gone so wrong. He had had a plan…the perfect plan. A plan to fake his death using the Teselecta. The Teselecta would be shot by River at lake Silencio thus preserving the timeline. He had a perfect simulation of a Time Lord’s regeneration ready to go. A simulation that would fool anyone who wasn’t a Time Lord into thinking he was dead. Then, after he was ‘dead,’ everyone involved would return to their normal lives minus one universe ending paradox. All would be well, right as rain, no problems whatsoever. 

But it hadn’t worked. And it had all gone wrong. So terribly and utterly wrong. There was not a word in any language to describe how wrong the universe had gone in that single moment on that beach. Well, there was one phrase in high gallifreyan which translated roughly into, ‘unforeseeable temporal catastrophe,’ that was pretty accurate. But gallifreyan was such a calculating and precise language and thus did not quite capture the personal aguish he was currently experiencing. 

The Doctor winced, rubbing his head, the world around him distorted in a very distracting manner. All of his senses were fuzzy and stuffy. Staying focused on single tasks had become almost impossible with the stabbing shrieks, which was the only way to describe the decayed time around him. Attempts to isolate himself felt like being wrapped in a big ball of wool…no scratch that…it was like drowning, if the water were jelly. Considering that time had stopped, and all history was currently happening at once, it was little wonder it was playing havoc with his senses. Time Lords were very attuned to time and time streams. To live in a universe where there were none, where everything was happening everywhere and in the same instance, was irritating at best and excruciatingly painful at worst. 

And the disturbance was expanding, swallowing the universe little by little. Soon there would be no time at all, then no universe and then no nothing. 

When River had turned that gun around to point at herself she had unknowingly created a paradox, a massive paradox of epic proportions. When he was involved was their really any other kind? 

Then she had gone and shot herself right at the center of that paradox, erasing herself from existence and creating another paradox on top of the paradox already happening. A double paradox. Which, had the circumstances been a bit different, would be incredible. The probability and possibility of a double paradox was virtually zero and the only other recorded occurrences were artificial, created by the Time Lords. Those artificial paradoxes had been carefully controlled with an advanced set of Paradox machines within a specialized displaced time bubble to contain any damage. They definitely hadn’t been strong enough to eat up all time. If he had anything to say it would be that River never did anything in half measures. 

Now here he was downing in a decaying universe of absurdity, with dinosaurs, Cleopatra and teleports all existing at the same time. And as River had never existed there was no way to set the first paradox right…let alone the second paradox. The only conceivable way he could think off to right the situation would be to remove himself from time and space. Not an easy feat by any means. But not entirely impossible. 

How? He would sort that out later. 

This, of course, led him to his current situation in which he was running, funny how that never changed, away from a group of reptilians, belonging to the Worshipers of the Police Box. And yes…that was the TARDIS he was referring to. 

Finding the TARDIS had been both easier and harder than expected. Easier because he could feel her calling out to him, like a beaker of light, across the decaying universe and harder because she, apparently, was the god of some odd religion that involved dancing around naked and blowing copious amounts of bubbles. Extracting the TARDIS from her enthusiastic worshipers had been a tricky business. 

She was going to be impossibly smug after this whole thing. Well, as smug and a multi-dimensional being could be. But theorizing about the TARDIS’s eventual smugness could wait for later. The Doctor ducked into a side room. For now he had to ensure the Silence did not find him and that meant escaping these reptilian persons. A few non-existent seconds of waiting and the Doctor exited the closet he had hidden in, sneaking down to the lower floor of the pyramid shaped office building and to the van in which he had stashed a disgruntled TARDIS. 

Phase one, liberate the TARDIS, complete. 

Now of to find the Pandorica into which he was going to lock himself and hopefully remove his existence from the universe….somehow. He was not one hundred percent sure how exactly this was to be achieved. It would be extremely tricky as he did not what to remove his entire existence- not to brag or anything but he was a pretty important part of the space time continuum-only the part that ended as a lynch pin for a double paradox. That planning would be something he could look forward to later…for now he was escaping.

It took him several hours-no time at all- of driving to feel secure enough to stop the van and unload the TARDIS. That had been an experience and a half. He had never attempted to move the TARDIS from the outside without help and lets just say it was a tinsy bit awkward. 

Finally, after a bit of fussing, he had the TARDIS sitting in the middle of a green English field populated by several hundred garden gnomes. Anxiously, he unlocked the doors and poked his head inside to survey the damage.

She was suffering, probably even more that himself, as a TARDIS was designed to live across all space and time. Now there was no space and time and her entire existence was crammed into a few seconds of existence. The Doctor cautiously slunk forward, stretching his senses out across their frayed bond. Even her connection to the time vortex was lacking, he noted with some worry. The Doctor winced and he ran a hand along the console. The control room was bathed in red light and there was a horrid wheezing sound reverberating though her frame. 

“Hey, you’re OK,” he petted her, “we’ll fix this.”

He grimaced as a garbed assortment of mental projections assaulted his mind. 

“It’s OK,” he murmured more to himself this time as he waited for the TARDIS to recalibrate herself and become accustomed to his presence. The process took far longer than it should but eventually the room felt stable enough and her mere presence did not remind him of attempts to fry his brain. She was defiantly not taking the current state of the universe very well. 

He then shared his impossibly stupid plan to lock the possibility of himself into the Pandorica. The Pandorica being the only thing sturdy enough to contain something like him. The plan to remove his existence, which he now knew would have to start at the point in which his tenth self regenerated into his eleventh. 

If he altered a single moment of that regeneration then a different man would saunter away. He wouldn’t exist…he would never exist…the possibility of him existing would not even exist. He would lock the moment, the moment in which he regenerated into himself, into the Pardorica. And, after he erased the possibility of existing, he would remove the echo-which would be his physical self- and trap it the Pandorica away from the universe. 

This plan relied on the TARDIS’s willingness to help. The TARDIS would be the one doing all the heavy lifting as he would just be setting coordinates, rewriting a few programs then climbing into the Pandorica when the time was right. 

Of course the TARDIS objected to this plan in a series of tremors, which wracked the ship, and threw him of balance. He hit the ground with a rather undignified splat. 

“That was a bit uncalled for,” he grumbled, pulling himself upright and rubbing his head. He was met by stony silence. 

“Oh come on, you know this is the only way,” he poked the console irritably. 

A bit on one-sided arguing later and he had her disgruntled consent. In the end, the universe had stopped and they needed to do something. No one was moving or advancing their timelines, succeeding, failing, growing, changing, nothing. Everything just was, without reason or purpose. 

A slowly decaying reality.


	2. Chapter 2

Phase two of his master plan involved tracking down the Pandorica. A task made easier with the TARDIS as he did not have to rely on outdated technology like trucks or hot air balloons. Additionally, the Pandorica ended up being exactly where he thought it would be. Buried under the Stongehedge. 

“Well then,” he rubbed his hands together, “best not was time.”

He quickly flicked around the box, prodding it with his screwdriver, taking measurements, calculating material weight, density, properties and ability to withstand large time/space fluctuations. 

Now, having the Pandorica sitting directly in front of him, a more concrete plan was able to emerge. Somehow he would have to get the Pandorica into the TARDIS…if he altered her materialization and transport protocols it should be possible. He glanced at the TARDIS, which was doing a very good job of looking unimpressed, considering it was a large blue box. Then the TARDIS would rewind his time stream to the point in which he came into existence, the moment of his regeneration. She would, in tandem with her past self, alter the regeneration process enough to extract his existence. Therefore ten would never become eleven…Well, he would become an eleven just not him. It would take an enormous amount of power, he began running the calculations 

Erasing his existence would create a massive improbability, which would hopefully destabilize the current double paradox. However, the energy cost would be high and he was counting on the shock, caused by the collapse of the double paradox, to account for 89.6759% of the fuel. The real question was…did the TARDIS have enough power to jump-start the whole process. 

If he made even the slightest miscalculation the universe would be torn to bits. But…since the universe was ending anyway… he would just have to hope for the best. He put the energy calculations into his secondary thought stream, running through simulations. He focused his primary train of thought on the rest of the plan. 

At that exact moment- the moment in which the TARDIS altered his regeneration-he would lock himself in the Pandorica. And then him and the TARDIS would both hurl themselves into the Void where they would spend the rest of eternity. 

He shivered in what was most certainly fear. For a Time Lord there was no greater torture than eternity. The Doctor paused in his work, lowering his screwdriver. His hands were shaking, making it harder to accurately measure the dimensions of the Pandorica. Trapped for all eternity in the ultimate prison within a never ending Void? Never do anything by haves as he always said. Why did he always say that again? He shivered, he must be very nervous, for his tight emotional control to be slipping. 

A tiny ‘ping’ brushed against his mind accompanied by a series of mental projections, which was the TRADIS attempting to calm him. There was a faint murmur, which could have been comfort, affection or attachment, he really didn’t know. 

It took him longer that estimated to properly measure the Pandorica down to the last atom. He was under no illusion that he was definitely procrastinating. Even with the TARDIS giving him all the emotional support he could hope for it did nothing to quell the terror that had rooted itself firmly within his hearts. 

He twisted around and moved back into the TARDIS. Carefully, he took the controls, flipping several switches and darting to the side to pull the leaver to dematerialize. With precision he carefully rematerialized the TARDIS around the Pandorica so it appeared within a specialized room. 

The material of the Pandorica was heavily resistant to time alteration so the whole process was a bit touch and go. But it worked, as he thought it would. Now all that was left to do was wait for the TARDIS to reconfigure herself around the Pandorica so that their systems could integrate. This could take anywhere from a few seconds to a few days… not that seconds and days existed in this horrid place. 

He opted wait outside the TARDIS, sitting atop one of the stones that made up the monument. From there he could observe the stream of beings wondering between the stones, going about their illogical business. Instead of the Stonehenge being deserted, like it was supposed to be, it seamed to be some futuristic market place. He had to admit it was a tiny bit fascinating to see so many odd things happening at once. 

Unfortunately, they did not hold his attention for long and he ended up staring absently out at the surprisingly empty green fields which and surrounded the hub of activity. 

It was easy to hate River. They just did not make psychopaths like they use to. If she had just shot him like she was supposed to then none of this would have happened. The universe would not be ending, he would not be dooming himself to an eternity of torture, Amy and Rory would be living out the rest of their lives safe from his destructive influence. Yes, it was very easy to hate and blame River. 

He couldn’t though. He could not. 

Because the River in that space suit had not been the River he had known later. The more logical River. She had been younger, confused, her mind altered and controlled by the Silence. 

She hadn’t wanted to kill him. 

Once upon a time River had said she loved him. Had told him that she had loved him for a long time. He had forgotten how wonderful and stupid humans in love could be. That they were capable of doing amazingly impossible things when in love. He spent so much time around humans, acting human, that he forgot that Time Lords felt emotions slightly differently. Emotions were often a secondary function for Time Lords, easy to control and harness. That sometimes this made him unintentionally arrogant and cold. 

Of course a young woman in love would fight tooth and nail to prevent the demise of the one she loved. Even at the cost of her own life. River, with a head full of commands telling her to assassinate him and a heart full of compassion telling her to do the opposite had calculated that, in order for him to live, she had to die. 

Thus, River, not knowing that the Teselecta was a decoy had fought her way through the Silence’s control and turned the gun on herself. And he was an idiot… a stupid, inconsiderate, uncaring, callous, idiot, for not taking her feelings into consideration and not realizing that this outcome was a strong probability. It really was his fault. 

He knew that he had become slightly indolent upon his regeneration. After his rollercoaster of a tenth regeneration some part of him had wished to be less… attached…if that was even a way to describe his affection for the people he traveled with. He had wanted to be less invested. He supposed his forgetful and easily distracted nature was a feature of this mindset. Although…one only had to look at his current situation to conclude that he had failed quite spectacularly at remaining unattached. 

He had gotten attached, again, and it had been amazing as it usually was. Then he had died and invited himself to his death, which he had not found out about until much too late. Then, Demons Run, the realization that he would not be able to completely save Amy’s daughter, and a few hundred years of running around the universe ignoring the problem. In that long time alone he had become isolated. Add that to depression, anger, and the tendency to keep himself distant and you got one massive oversight. 

He rubbed his head when the calculations he had be running as a secondary thought process provided him with an unsatisfactory result. He pulled out his screwdriver, which had also been running the same calculations, frowning as it confirmed his fears. 

The TARDIS would not survive the energy requirements needed to erase his existence. It would take everything she had to escape the double paradox and rewind his timeline in the hopes of creating a chain reaction. And it still might not be enough. He ran his had through his hair. 

He ran over the calculations several more times before sighing in defeat. 

This was it.

This plan to save the universe really would take everything he had. The universe, his existence and the TARDIS. 

He was saved from his pit of depression by the appearance of several military vehicles on the horizon. They were speeding towards the Stonehenge at an accelerated rate, converging from several directions on his location. 

It could be just another oddity of this strange world or it could be The Silence finally tracking him down. Whatever the case it would be best to return to the TARDIS and wait in a different location. 

With a bit of a flourish the Doctor leapt down from the high stone he had been standing on and made his way back to the TARDIS. 

“Doctor!”

The call froze him in disbelief, halting him briefly in his dash to the stairs. There was Amelia Pond, beautiful, amazing Amy Pond and she was wearing an eye patch. But there was no time to worry about possible abductions and Amy becoming a part of the Silence. He was already running and leaping down the stone steps towards his TARDIS. Soon none of this would exist and Amy would live an amazingly normal human life where she would marry Rory and have an adorable baby and raise a family. A life without him. 

“Wait!”

He hesitated for a millisecond at the door, watching Amy come into view. Then he was slamming it shut. He leaned against the door and ruffled his hair irritably. 

“All right, let’s get out of here,” he moved to the console, “wouldn’t want to waste time, if there were time to waste.”

As he flipped switches he continued muttering under his breath, “Frozen time, all reality happening at once, it really is quite annoying.”


	3. Chapter 3

Once he had relocated to a safer location he divided his time between animatedly chatting in the control room and glaring at the Pandorica, bouncing a rubber ball between it and a wall. Though, as the TARDIS slowly merged with the ancient prison, the difference between the Pandorica’s walls and the TARDIS’s walls became harder to define. 

“When you really think about it, it wasn’t really my fault. How was I suppose to know that shoes where band on the third day of every luna cycle,” the Doctor, leaning against the control column, said, gesturing to emphasis his point, “They should have really had signs.”

He rolled his eyes at the TARDIS’s huffy silence, which he interoperated as her being not amused.

“And didn’t get me started on that blue planet with the funny pink water, Puto-dromidus, I think it was called, awful place, smelt like fish. It took weeks, WEEKS!” he waved his hands in the air, “to get the smell ventilated.” 

“That wiggit room with the funny lighting still smells you know,” he pointed upward.

“I do like a good wiggit,” he added as an afterthought. 

He was about to lunch into another recount when a low-pitched and unnecessarily ominous bell reverberated through the TARDIS. He supposed that was that then. The TARDIS had managed to adequately incorporate the Pandorica into her matrix, which could not have been a pleasant experience. He had almost been hoping that she would be unsuccessful to be honest. 

Time to start saving the universe…again. 

“It’s been amazing. Fantastic, brilliant. The best of times, the worst of times. Good book that one,” he hummed as he went about inputting program alterations. 

Everything ended eventually. 

No one knew that better than him. 

He had seen his people at their best and at their worst. He had seen the birth of stars and planets and the end of everything. The great darkness into which everything returned that the light of creation. 

He had watched the end of the golden age, the age of the Time Lord. Had witnessed time tear itself apart. Had seen the universe come together and right itself in the wake of the Last Great Time War. He had explored and seen so much. 

He was old. Perhaps it really was his time. Before he became too big, too important. 

‘The man that could turn an army around at the mere mention of his name,’ 

River had said that at Demons Run. Had he really become that? He had never wanted to be someone that people feared. But stuff kept happening and all the time, every single time, the people around him ended up hurt. And when the smoke cleared it would be him, alone, standing in the rubble. Time Lord Victorious. And it made him so mad. No matter how kind he was, how many chances he gave, it was always for nothing. He fiddled with the collar of his jacket. 

Maybe this was for the best. Maybe it was time for the Doctor, this Doctor that he had become to take a bow. Another Eleventh Doctor could give the universe a go and hopefully not be as reckless as he was.

“I suppose Silence will fall after all,”

The TARDIS, predictably, said nothing but he could tell that she disapproved of his sudden spiral into self-pity. 

“You’re right,” he grinned snapping up, “Lets go out with a bang and save the universe while we’re at it.” 

He quickly darted around to finish up imputing the last algorithms. 

“How about it old girl,” spun the time standardisation wheel and pinged the dislocation switch in an exaggerated manner.

“One last ride,”

The TARDIS began to wheeze as it started a warm up sequence. There was no mistaking the positive vide suddenly buzzing through the air, which he guessed was her way of psyching herself up. He laughed as they dematerialized, probably for the last time, and gave an excited yell when they hit the vortex storm at the edge of the double paradox. 

They really were about to attempt the impossible. He was sure no one else had destabilized a double paradox before. There were several creeks and explosions upon contact with the main vortex’s center. The epicenter into which time was shredding in an effort to maintain existence. 

“Right, I need to get in the Pardorica,” before the TARDIS collapsed in on herself. 

Everything shuddered and he moved about the controls, setting the coordinates needed. The room rotated as the gravity functions and internal atmospherics went screwy. He launched himself towards the Pardorica

Another explosion. He sat himself down, locking in the restraints. This time no one would be there to unlock them.

“I really don’t want to go,” didn’t this feel familiar. 

The doors to the Pandorica began to close. This was it. Goodbye to everything. 

“It’s been fun. I'm glade....Glad you stole me away all those years ago…"

“Goodbye…”

Nothing. 

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A shudder. 

Different.

A shudder. 

Odd…

He paused briefly before returning to his count. 

Approximately, 10 303 049 283 084 082 083 804 808 402 389 480 947 584 903 783 334 087 509 347 589 708 367 898 847 738 343 984 759 089 405 738 904 759 084 759 837 458 034 789 573 058 340 759 834 759 034 785 037 459 746 507 364 597 345 697 364 578 hours 895 093 480 893 274 893 702 930 minuets and 98 576 799 443 656 572 956 658 392 765 738 292 856 477 382 837 575 584 seconds had past since his last check, but it was hard to tell as he would often get distracted and lose his place. Who knew how many seconds past when that happened? But he would pick up from where he left off, or start again, or recite the numerals of pie. Anything to give some semblance of linier time. 

Could one count infinity? If they were given forever …was it possible? His thoughts circled away from him in the distracted manner they usually did. All the while he maintained his a constant count as a secondary task. 

A shudder. 

The shudder….the disturbance…it was almost like feeling something move. 

Which was impossible because he didn’t have access to the body centers or organs needed to register such an occurrence. Perhaps, he was experiencing phantom body syndrome. It was theorized that humanoids who lost their body sometimes felt echoes from said body. He examined the thought, his brain automatically providing him with bits of data he had compiled on the phenomenon. Hmm, several case studies into peoples belonging to the Order of the Headless Monks confirmed that they still experienced some bodily echoes. However, some theorized that this was due to a residue physic attachment to the body. He frowned as he came across an unfinished physic study within his deep memory. He must not have read the whole study through. 

Of course, he had thought through this matter, the matter of body echoes, and conducted this theoretical investigation before. It felt like he had done and thought everything before. If eternity was anything, it was long. 

There was the disturbance again. Odd. Which really was fascinating. How many times did he get to think ‘odd’…Not a lot. Not a lot of new things happened when you were stuck with your own thoughts. He checked on his count. 3 78 633 minutes had pasted since he had last checked. 

Something shifted. 

It was hard to put his finger on what it was exactly, but he could almost say the pressure dropped. Which was impossible. For the pressure to drop someone would have had to release the time stops which would mean someone had released the external dead locks. That was impossible because the Pandorica was in the Void and no one should be able to reach it there. 

Obviously, no one had told the Pandorica this fact as there was now a definite change in air density and pressure, enough to give him a sense of kinesthesia.

Then there was a hiss, an actual physical hiss, and the world around him opened. 

He could breath, he could feel, he could see. 

Stimulation! 

And suddenly he was aware of his body, his limbs, his hands, and his beating hearts. After spending so much time as just a floating consciousness, comprised only of thoughts, becoming gradually more and more disjointed and incoherent, the change was amazing. 

“Hahahah,” he breathed out slowly. That was his voice! Those were his lungs! He could hear!! 

“Hear, yes, sight, yes. Legs, I have legs…Again!” he said excitedly, wiggling his body around in the chair to get a better feel for it. He wobbled to his feet as the clamps fastening him into the Pandorica, came undone. 

He took a step, registered the sensation of falling and the discomfort of hitting something hard. 

“Fantastic,” he grinned into the dirt. There was dirt, real, actual dirt, not that that simulation stuff he had been putting together in his head in a bid to ward off boredom.

“Wow… air,” he took a deep breath and his mind was flooded with new data as his taste and olfactory centers gathered information, “Oxygen, Nitrogen, Argon, Carbon dioxide…earth?” 

He frowned. What?

“I’m on earth? Carbon decay indicates…” he quickly ran through the calculations, it was so liberating to have something new to do after spending all that time stuck with the same-old boring thoughts, “5th century” 

“How am I on earth?” 

How was he even coherent? He should have wasted away into insanity, into nothing, long before anyone managed to fish the Pandorica out of the Void. How did he still exist? 

“The type of matter extraction technology needed to bring stuff out of the Void…impossible. Not to mention the Pandoica has some of the most advanced shielding…even a Void ship would have problems. Only the Time Lords, maybe the Eternals…” he trained off as his brain leapt at the opportunity to sort through this new puzzle. 

“Hello?” 

The loud jarring noise derailed his thoughts. He blinked, registering a voice that was not his own. The voice was very familiar. 

Hello: A greeting, Traditional Earth English, popular between 19th and 40th Century, Standard Earth Calendar. What? That can’t be right? 

“Shhhh,” he hissed, flailing slightly as his limbs refused to work how he knew they should. 

It was then that he registered the presence to his right, currently crouching and keeping to a safe distance. He recognized that smell. His brain automatically paired it with its closest match. Rose Tyler and Jacky Tyler both produced the same assortment of smells, chemicals and spoke in a similar pitch. What?

He turned his head to the right for visual confirmation. He blinked. Yes, it was defiantly Rose or someone who looked a lot like her. 

“Are you all right?”

What??


End file.
